Yes, I know. I bought it so I could do fast FEM of antennas and digital signal lines, fast evolutionary programming, and faster routing of printed circuit boards - not for gaming. Playing UT2004 though - it screams!

First try:
0. Started computer, found that full 80GB was used for XP.
1. Defragged XP partition.
2. Tried installing Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition. Resized NTFS partition, install went OK. Installed GRUB into MBR of /dev/hda (MISTAKE!)
3. XP no longer booted. If I booted Knoppix, I could still see all of my files, though. Copied important ones to flash drive.
4. Tried to restore MBR using sfdisk, described at:http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg00908.html.
No go.
4.1. Tried making sure that hard drive was in LBA mode. No go.
5. Tried to restore MBR using fdisk /fixmbr. No go.

Second try:
0. Reinstall XP. Use installer to create 1 60GB primary partition and 1 20GB extended partition.
1. Tried to install FC2. Made partitions using the installer:
/hda2 100MB /boot
/hda3 4GB /
/hda4 1GB /swap
/hda5 9.5GB /home
2. Installed GRUB into /boot.
2.1. Using knoppix, use "dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/mnt/sda1/backup.mbr bs=512 count=1" to copy MBR to flash drive.
2.2. Using knoppix, use "dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/mnt/sda1/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1" to copy first 512B of /boot to flash drive.
3. Restarted. Planned to copy bootsect.lnx to c:\ and use NTLDR. No XP again?! Black screen.
4. Found that all of kernel 2.6 futzes with the MBR and hoses it for XP, even if you don't create any partitions!